Baseball: Hoping Red Sox trade is franchise-changer

Sunday

Aug 26, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Bill Ballou Baseball

The Red Sox’ unloading of Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers has created the most excitement seen among their fans since, let’s see — since they signed Crawford and traded for Gonzalez.

What feels better about yesterday’s housecleaning is that it wasn’t done just to create excitement; it was an admission that the way the Sox have done business in the last four or so years was a mistake, and a new model is needed.

We can only hope that means the sellout streak is over, “Sweet Caroline” will be retired, and young couples in love will once again go to Craigville Beach and not Fenway Park to get engaged.

“We can build a team and not focus on transactions,” is how general manager Ben Cherington put it.

Cherington, who mostly had bided his time since taking over for Theo Epstein last winter, has done something bolder and more stunning than Epstein ever did. World history buffs might compare this trade to the announcement some 40 years ago that Richard Nixon was visiting China.

It seems inconceivable that the Sox could pull off a deal so big — and make no mistake, this is one of the most significant trades in baseball history and certainly in Red Sox history — considering how boxed in their roster situation seemed just a week ago.

Even if Gonzalez bats the Dodgers into the World Series and Beckett wins three games in it, this deal was a stroke of genius by the Red Sox. Neither would ever have led the Sox anywhere, and all they had become these days is cloggers — taking up roster spots.

Quite likely, yesterday’s deal will go down as one of the five or six most significant moves the franchise has made in its 112 years in business.

Not all of those moves worked out, though, and this one also could signal a long-term reversal of fortunes for the Sox, although things couldn’t get much worse than they are now.

Other franchise-changing moves that compare with yesterday’s, and how they turned out:

•The sale of Babe Ruth in January 1920: That didn’t work at all. It marked the beginning of Harry Frazee’s dismantling of what had been the best organization in the American League, and led to more than a decade of abject failure.

•Tom Yawkey’s purchase of the Sox in 1933: He rescued the franchise from the post-Frazee hangover, and while Yawkey’s team never won a World Series, he made it competitive again and solvent again.

•The nine-player trade with the Tigers on June 2, 1952, that included Johnny Pesky and Walt Dropo: That situation was very similar to this one. The Sox had been great for several years but lost their sizzle by ’52 and it was time to clean house, which they did. Unfortunately, they messed it up and were not good again until 1967.

•The firing of general manager Mike Higgins in September 1965: It showed that Yawkey cared about his team again after years of neglect and introduced Dick O’Connell as the best GM in team history, the man who created the “Red Sox Nation” that exists today.

•The purchase of the team by John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino in the spring of 2002: It had a similar feel to yesterday’s trade, a purge of all the baggage that had built up during the years of frustration between World Series titles.

As Cherington noted yesterday, change for the better can happen fast, even when a team is almost starting from scratch. Two years after Henry and his partners bought the Red Sox, they won the World Series and Cherington noted, “This ownership group realizes how quickly things can change.”

In 1965, the Boston lost 100 games. In 1966, it finished in ninth place. And in ’67, it took the Cardinals to seven games in the World Series, then didn’t post a losing record until 1983.

This is not Harry Frazee or the ’52 Sox. For the past couple of years, it seemed as though the people who ran the team either did not know what they were doing, did not care, or both. That all changed yesterday, and for the first time in a while, there really does seem to be a reason to look forward not just to next year, but the ones beyond as well.

Answers:

1. In the last 50 years, Kelly Shoppach and this pitcher are the only two players the Red Sox have traded twice.

2. The last season in which the Red Sox played a regulation game in less than two hours.

3. The last season in which Boston led the American League in attendance.

Questions below.

Since they both moved from New York to California in 1958, the Dodgers and Giants have finished 1-2 in the standings eight times, but not since 2004. How Melky Cabrera’s suspension affects this year’s race remains to be seen, and the rivalry just doesn’t seem to have as much juice as in the past. The three-game series at Dodger Stadium the Giants swept early last week drew about 133,000, including one sellout. The Dodgers’ three-game series with the Rockies at home just before that attracted 125,000 — not a huge difference. … Car thieves always figure out ways to steal cars no matter what kind of antitheft technology is invented, so there will always be players who find ways not to get caught using performance-enhancing drugs. However, when they do get caught, chances are they have a lot of money in the bank and when their suspension is over, they will be welcomed back by their team and teammates. That would change, and make the stakes a little higher, if teams had to forfeit any games they won while a player like Cabrera was in the lineup. … Beckett got a lot of deserved grief for both his performance and demeanor, but his annual bowling event for charity was a winner. One thing he should have done right away, though, to endear himself to Sox fans was to have it at candlepin lanes and not tenpins. … The three Terry Francona coaches who went on to become managers have not done well. Brad Mills was 171-274 when the Astros fired him, John Farrell is 137-150 with Toronto, and Dale Sveum’s record with the Brewers and Cubs is 55-82. … Speaking of the Blue Jays, they are 222-229 since firing J.P. Ricciardi as general manager. … Just a thought, but for a left-handed batter with his kind of speed, Jacoby Ellsbury grounds into way too many double plays. … Another thought: David Ortiz may have the bat of a 25-year-old, but he has the body of a 36-year-old as his recent stint on the DL shows, which is why the Red Sox will be prudent to keep signing him to short-term deals, no matter how insulted he feels. … This is the kind of season it has been at Fenway Park: Until this year, veteran official scorer Mike Shalin had never run into one of those strange situations where runs are unearned for the team, but earned for a relief pitcher. It has happened twice in 2012 to Sox hurlers, once to Vicente Padilla and once to Clayton Mortensen. … Anyone see plate ump Brian Runge’s performance at Fenway on Wednesday night? Runge almost got pitchers on both teams injured with throws back to them that were either way too high, way too low, or five feet wide. On the other hand, there is umpire Jim Joyce, one of the best people in the game, who used CPR to help save a woman’s life at Chase Field in Phoenix before the Diamondbacks game there on Monday night.

Bill Mueller is an assistant to the general manager in the Dodgers organization; one-time third base prospect Luis Ortiz is a batting coach in the Rangers’ farm system, and Frank Viola is the pitching coach for the Mets’ Class-A affiliate in Savannah, Ga.

Shawn Wooten manages the Padres’ Lake Elsinore farm team in the California League; John Wasdin, who was a pitching coach last year in Burlington, Vt., is the pitching coach for the A’s Midwest League farm team in Burlington, Iowa, this year, and Bryant Nelson is in his third season with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.

1. Who is Dick Drago? Boston traded Shoppach to the Indians in 2006, then to the Mets earlier this month. The Sox traded Drago to the Angels in 1976, then to the Mariners in 1981.

2. What is 1999? On April 22 of that season, the Red Sox lost to the Tigers in Detroit, 1-0, in a game that took 1:57 to complete. Jason Thompson was the winning pitcher, Mark Portugal the loser.

3. What is 1975? Boston drew 1,748,587 to Fenway Park that year as it won the American League pennant and went on to the World Series versus the Reds.